If serving your customers well is the goal of your organization, start with your organization's ability to execute its core competency. For a retailer that may mean excelling at the logistics necessary to get goods in your store in a cost-effective manner and never having an empty shelf. For the service sector, it might mean dispatch logistics on well-stocked service vehicles with highly trained service persons. For the manufacturing sector, it might be producing defect-free goods on time and shipping the product on schedule.
However, I frequently observe upper management engaging in what I like to call the flavor-of-the-month-management-strategy. This probably doesn't need explaining; it's the continuing saga of executives again and again stabbing in the dark for their instant silver-bullet solution to the perceived ills of their organization.
Per Minute In-Stock Product
Sure, your customers care about the age-old business triad: price, quality and service, with selection being part of the quality segment. But, in today's busy environment, what your customers really care about is you having what they want when they want it. "It's coming in this afternoon" is no longer acceptable. Your customers will simply leave and go to the competition.
Your customers measure you by their mental "per minute in-stock" proposition. So, if your organization's latest flavor-of-the-month program does not directly help your organization to be in stock at all times, be competitively priced at all times and be pleasant at all times. Then, why are you doing it?
Middle Management Mediocrity
How many times have you seen in your workplace people redoing work or activities for very poor reasons? Most likely, more than you'd like to admit. This situation frequently rears its ugly head when organizations' leaders experience communication challenges—let's call it what it really is: they are poor communicators.
There is also another down side; rank and file employee demoralization. When employees witness what they completely believe is laziness or incompetence on the part of their supervisors, do you really think they are motivated to try harder?
Some executives believe that planned chaos keeps employees on their toes. Planned chaos can make things interesting for an employee who needs constant stimulation. However, it makes it nearly impossible for the competent and productive employee to remain.
Measure What You Should Manage
Do you think your customers care about your dollars per square foot, dollars per transaction, employee costs or end-of-the-year profitability? They simply want you to have what they want, when they want it. They just want you to be great at your core competency.
Those are the metrics upon which you should obsess.
By Ed Rigsbee, CSP
As an internationally recognized speaker on partnering, Ed Rigsbee has been maneuvering his way through the organizational mazes of for-profits and nonprofits for more than four decades. For the last two decades, Rigsbee has been an observer, researcher and teacher, helping organizations of all sizes to build successful internal and external collaborative relationships. He travels internationally to deliver keynote presentations and workshops on profitable alliance relationships. In addition to serving as president of Rigsbee Research Consulting Group, he is the executive director of a (501 (c) 3) public nonprofit charity. Rigsbee has authored three books and over 1,500 articles helping organizations to take full advantage of their potential. To contact Rigsbee, get additional (free) resources and sign up for his complimentary weekly Effective Executive eLetter, visit www.Rigsbee.com.
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